blogging in the news

"One of the things that got clobbered in the money-hungry Internet boom of late 1990s was the role of the individual," said John Lawlor, an independent marketing consultant and devoted blogger at http://www.blogs4business.com.

"Blogs are a friction-free way to communicate" that restores power to individuals with something to say, Lawlor said.

Blogs are simple Web-page publishing tools that hundreds of thousands of Internet users regularly use to write annotated guides to the best of the woolly world of the Web.

They do so with a freshness and passion that has drawn the attention of major Internet media companies, as highlighted by last week's purchase by Web search powerhouse Google of Pyra Labs, the tiny band of San Francisco programmers behind Blogger, the most popular software tool for creating Web logs.

...The phenomenon is changing the basic metaphors for how the Web works. Bloggers don't so much surf as clip excerpts from the Internet, then share these choice tidbits with friends, colleagues, and passers-by from other blogs. ...Dave Winer, a pioneering Silicon Valley-based software programmer who is widely credited with spearheading the self-publishing movement, sees blogging following a well-worn path into the mainstream.

"At first the geeks go for a new information technology. It is required for that to happen. Then you have the lawyers and the librarians. Following very closely after that comes education and business," he said.

Interestingly, the story notes toward the end how AOL totally missed the boat:

A spokeswoman for AOL, the largest Internet services company, says they won't be far behind. "We do have blogs under development. It's something that members will see later this year," she told Reuters.